Posts Tagged ‘bonding wire’
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February 19th, 2010
Semiconductor Packaging News
Over the last few weeks we kicked-off the debate about gold vs copper bonding wire in semiconductor packaging (see here and here).
Semiconductor Packaging News have just featured this interview with me.
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November 4th, 2009
The High Reliability Choice in Semiconductor Packaging
The reliability of gold in microelectronic packaging makes it the standard, by which all other materials must be judged. Even though the price of gold has risen significantly in this decade the usage of gold in microelectronic packaging has continued to grow as efforts to make the most cost-effective usage of gold through spot plating, plating thickness reduction and the usage of thinner bonding wire have been successful. Gold wire remains the main wire material for ball bonding in microelectronics assembly and has proven reliable in billions of devices over many years. However, high gold prices are increasingly forcing a shift towards cheaper copper wire, despite concerns over reliability. Today, in a paper with Lee Levine of Process Solutions Consulting at IMAPS 2009 we will be explaining that there is a need to obtain higher quality reliability data with gold and copper wires supported by state of the art analytical methods. This will help quantify and validate the relative merits of the two metals in this critical application. We also point out that design-for-recycling should also be an important consideration in material selection. The precious metals (mainly gold) constitute a very substantial proportion of the material value of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) and gold can be considered as a key component of the economic viability of WEEE recycling.
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October 1st, 2009
Better outlook for electronics demand
More than one electronics industry analyst is suggesting the outlook for the semiconductor industry is better than it has been for some time. IC Insights, iSuppli and SEMI have all made positive comments on this topic in the last couple of weeks. When this will feed through into increased gold bonding wire demand is not yet clear…. -
August 12th, 2009
Wire bonding training
Wire bonding, using predominantly gold bonding wire, remains the primary interconnection process in the semiconductor arena. With state-of-the-art bonders operating at rates > 32 bonds per second, it is a highly advanced manufacturing process. Learn more about the single-most important industrial application of gold through this event run by the International Microelectronics and Packaging Society.
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June 8th, 2009
The advantages of gold bonding wire
There’s no doubt that the interest in copper wire bonding as a ‘lower’ cost alternative to gold bonding wire for semiconductor packaging is growing. This is not suprising given a) the current gold price and b) the downturn in the semiconductor industry which increases the search for cost saving opportunities. From our work on the topic, we believe the techno-economic benefits of gold are still compelling for the majority of wire bonding applications. We’ll be working hard to demonstrate these benefits over the coming months. In the meantime you can learn more about the wire bonding process at this event during SEMICON West.
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May 29th, 2009
Downturn to spur shift from copper to gold?
According to this report the economic downturn could spur the shift from copper to gold bonding wire. There are good technical (and economic) reasons why this isn’t necessarily so and more on this will follow……
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May 19th, 2009
New volume production for X-wire
X-wire technology is a new advanced form of gold bonding wire that offers the opportunity for improvements in microchip design and packaging.The drive for smaller components, increasing system functionality and cost reduction are all competing demands in the electronics industry. To help chip designers and manufacturers address these competing demands, an insulated wire bonding technology known as X-Wire™ was originally developed by a Canadian company, Microbonds Inc in co-operation with several leading gold bonding wire companies around the world. X-Wire™ Technology consists of a proprietary insulation applied to bare bonding wires. The technology overcomes the inherent limitations of bare wire bonding interconnections which have to be designed to ensure that the bare wires do not touch, so avoiding short circuits. In contrast when using insulated wire, chip designers can reduce the criticality of wire clearance, allowing for previously impossible chip designs to be realised.
Yesterday, United Test & Assembly Center (UTAC), Tanaka Denshi Kogyo KK of Japan and Microbonds announced that UTAC has selected Tanaka X-Wire insulated wire bonding technology for volume production.
It has been reported that UTAC performed extensive testing on devices assembled using 20µm and 25µm X-Wire gold based bonding wires produced by Tanaka Denshi Kogyo KK, the volume production licensee of the X-Wire Technology. The X-Wire devices passed key reliability test standards, customer electrical performance test criteria and manufacturing capability tests.
This is a significant new development in maintaining gold’s position as the material of choice for interconnection technology.
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May 7th, 2009
Electronics recovery?
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March 30th, 2009
Gold Grows Semiconductor Materials Market
SEMI is the US-based industry association serving the manufacturing supply chain for the microelectronics industry. They have just released their 2008 market survey for the semiconductor packaging materials market, which includes the use of gold bonding wire. The market for packaging materials in 2008 was $18.6 billion compared to $17.5 billion for 2007. It was the higher gold metal price in 2008 that contributed to the year-on-year growth in this market.
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March 17th, 2009
New gold bonding wire product
As those working in the microelectronics industry will know, wire bonding technology is the most widespread and reliable interconnection technique. Whilst aluminum, copper and their alloys can all be used as wire materials, high purity gold bonding wire remains the material of choice, having been widely used in semiconductor devices since the assembly of semiconductor packages began approximately 40 years ago. Gold is used because of its ductility, low electrical resistance and resistance to oxidation.
Last week W. C. Heraeus announced the launch of Rel-k, a new 99.5% pure gold wire. Rel-k is available in production quantities and is being shown for the first time in public this week at Heraeus’s booth at Semicon China
Richard Holliday
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